


living's just a waste of death

by newaddress1997



Category: Political Animals
Genre: Mental Health Issues, Politics, Pre-Canon, Recreational Drug Use, Sexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:54:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23437273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newaddress1997/pseuds/newaddress1997
Summary: exploring the life of T.J. Hammond pre-show.might finish it, might not as i haven't watched this show in five years, but i found this on my computer last night and liked it so have a thing that ends on a sort of conclusive note?
Kudos: 10





	living's just a waste of death

**Author's Note:**

> cw: underage drinking, recreational drug use, mental illness, one super brief mention of sex trafficking
> 
> detailed content warning in the end notes
> 
> i started writing this the summer between high school and college and just found it on my computer again a year after graduating college. it's literally the only thing i wrote in that era that i don't hate so have a thing ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

** i. preteen sexuality crisis **

The first time that TJ drinks in a non-social setting is when he realizes that he's gay. Not in a 'sometimes I like it rough in a way that’s easier with guys' way or an 'I am attracted to literally anyone who's hot enough' way. But in a 'I am romantically and sexually attracted only to people of the same sex' way. 

He's fifteen and he's just kissed a boy in the only dark corner of a school dance where three-quarters of the attendees have bodyguards or Secret Service. He's just kissed a boy and he realizes exactly why he had fun with girls but never felt desire the way his brother did, and his first thought after is, _This is going to be a fucking train wreck._ Because he's the president's son. He doesn't have the luxury of keeping this to himself and telling people one by one until he's ready to come out publicly. If he tells one person that's it; if the media doesn't find out first. 

When he gets home that night he spends two and a half hours spiraling in his anxiety before he seeks out the bottle of Jack. He's pretty sure his brother sees him with it in the hallway, but something in his face must be broadcasting how much he needs it because Douglas keeps his mouth shut. 

Whiskey's a lot grosser when there's no party happening and no one to impress, but it works.

** ii. the strategic closet **

TJ comes out fifteen months and three weeks later after someone on the White House housekeeping staff overhears a conversation that she shouldn't have and then decides to gossip about it in front of important people, including his dad's press secretary. _He_ decides that TJ needs to come out before the press finds out, especially considering the goodwill his dad would get from the LGBT community with representation in the White House. 

He's already keeping the bottle in his bedroom by that point. 

** iii. troubled kids **

Boarding school is a thing soon after, but not a very exciting one. All boys, rich kids in Connecticut, with a reputation for helping 'troubled' kids. Their methods for keeping drugs and alcohol off-campus are surprisingly effective, but they can't stop him from fucking his way through any student (correction: person, student or otherwise) on the campus who would even consider sleeping with another guy, so . . . 

** iv. college&coke **

He doesn't venture past alcohol and marijuana until college. He's at Georgetown with a major in American musical culture and a minor in Social and Political Thought and he's drifting. At some point, he got too busy being Washington's token gay child to actually figure out what he wanted to do with his life. He’s on track for five years just for his Bachelor's because of switching schools once and majors three times and he still doesn't know what the hell he's doing with his life and it's fucking with his anxiety. 

And that's when he finds Xanax. His anxiety is bad enough that he could probably get a Xanax prescription honestly if he saw someone, but doctor’s offices aren't good at keeping secrets from the press whereas drug dealers operating on college campuses have a lot more practice. The Xanax works . . . kind of. It hits the anxiety, but it flattens him out, and his music professors notice. He trades the panic for the self-destructive apathy of his high school days and his grades suffer for it. But he can breathe again and get to sleep at night so it's worth it. It's so, so worth it. His parents comment on his grades and his lack of direction, but if anything that makes him take more pills because he can't deal with their criticism-disguised-as-concern without it. 

But then there's cocaine. His senior year finds him completely unmotivated like any other senior, but it’s especially debilitating when he still in the anxiety/apathy cycle. There’s a reason that mental health professionals consider benzos a band-aid fix if they’re not accompanied by other types of treatment. It’s not like they help you manage anxiety like an anti-depressant would, or prime you to cope with it. They just magic away the anxiety for a limited period of time and then it all comes back. And it’s _exhausting_. The whole cycle is unbearable, and he hates himself and everything else equally. WebMD says he’s probably depressed. Fuck WebMD.

But he needs to do something different because the Xanax is keeping him from getting anything done, which is counterproductive to managing his anxiety.

His dealer suggests he gets out of anti-anxiety drugs altogether and switch to stimulants. TJ gives him an unfair amount of shit until he actually looks it up, and realizes that outside of just the energy and the potential for anxiety, there is increased mental alertness and an increased sociality. And he’s already anxious, so what does he have to lose?

He tries speed first. He’s used to pills and Adderall is ridiculously easy to find at a school with incredible academic pressure. It’s not a good fit for him. It’s not instant enough, and while he is able to focus better, he wants something he can use as/need and feel immediately like the Xanax. The obvious answer is cocaine. He doesn’t like it; snorting drugs is generally unpleasant and not very subtle. Also, cocaine in a useable form doesn’t have any medical uses, so it’s more expensive and riskier. But TJ desperately needs results so he tries it. 

TJ Hammond finds God in his first line of cocaine. If Xanax just kind of mutes everything, coke boosts his self-confidence, energy, and resilience enough that he doesn't care about the rest of it. He's expecting a fifteen minute high, but instead, he gets closer to thirty and he sits down in front of the baby grand and writes the rest of his final composition that's been messing him up for weeks. It's probably the best thing he's ever written.

He gets a 99 on the performance and his professor writes on the eval sheet, " _This piece is everything that impressed me about your work when I first started teaching you, and everything I seemed to lose somewhere around your junior year. Welcome back, TJ._ " And that's the beginning of the end because TJ's a sucker for approval he's earned on his own merit and he'll do just about anything to keep it. Including trying to control a Schedule II drug to self-medicate his creativity back. 

Cocaine gets him to his college graduation, and at the same time, it guarantees his downfall once he leaves. He probably wouldn't have finished without it ,  but by the time he leaves he doesn't know how to be a functional adult without a bump of cocaine before to sharpen him and a line after to calm the hell down. 

He graduates and his parents, his brother, his friends, and the media all ask the same damn question, "So what are you doing now?" He gets it; Douglas was talking about specific positions in the State Department before he even went to college, and had a spot waiting for him as soon as he got out. TJ, on the other hand, likes music. When he's high. Otherwise, it's just frustrating. He has no fucking clue about anything else though, so when one of his professors pulls some strings and gets him an offer at Carnegie Hall in advocacy he takes it. It's music adjacent, outside of DC, and allows him to use his name and "fame" for something worthwhile. 

But leaving DC.

**v. New York**

New York is good, at first. It’s new, and it’s away from the family drama, and the majority of New Yorkers are too cool to bother him on the street. He takes advantage of the nightlife about twice a week, and once you’ve clubbed on hard drugs anything else seems stale, but otherwise, he’s off blow and ex for about a month. Getting out of the political haze of DC and away from the constant parental pressure and twin comparisons does him a lot of good.

And then everything goes to shit at work and he’s crawling back to cocaine multiple times a day because Lord knows he can’t deal with that clean anymore.

The network that operates in the two or three clubs he frequents only sells in clubs, so he has to find a new dealer. He hates finding new dealers. A good seventy-five percent of them will try to screw him because they know he has money and he’s a sad little white boy that will let himself get screwed.

He finds someone eventually. Good coke, just above the going rate in New York (that he can tell, anyway), and easy, safe transactions in his apartment.

Right up until some distribution channel bullshit means no cocaine.

He starts taking double doses of ex, but it’s not a substitute since ecstasy isn’t just “weaker”; it has a completely different effect. It takes a good forty-five minutes before he feels anything, compared to a few minutes after snorting coke, and ecstasy is a hallucinogen, which is inconvenient for daytime use. His tolerance is high enough that it’s usually not that disruptive, but a couple of bad trips have him gripping the edge of his desk hard enough to break skin until the geometric patterns and pulsing lights fade.

At that point, he stops taking ex at work and starts buying a gram of cocaine each time he goes clubbing, but buying a gram from a club dealer is ungodly expensive since that’s not what they do. It’s not like he’s hurting for money, but it’s insult added to injury when he notices that it’s at least half filler. The club crowd only uses coke when they’re feeling ‘dangerous’, so they don’t know the difference, but TJ does. Fifteen for a line is acceptable when you’re caught up in the party atmosphere and craving the high, but $250 for a gram is fucking ridiculous, even for New York, _especially_ when it’s half fillers.

The next time he sees his regular dealer, he says offhand, “How much money do I need to put in to get cocaine again, because I honestly would write a blank check for some pure blow right now.” He doesn’t really mean anything by it, but his dealer takes it seriously and says he’ll look into it.

He’s withdrawing $10K in cash the next day. He has a free ounce (“a small thank you for your investment”) in his vanity in three days.

After that, his dealer considers him an investor. He floats them money when they need it, and finds free product in his mailbox. He really wishes they’d stop leaving stuff in the mailbox, because he can’t afford to get caught over something that stupid, but his ‘suggestions’ keep getting ignored.

It lasts for about seven months until, _“ **NYPD and FBI bust drug- and sex-trafficking ring partially funded by misfit former first-kid TJ Hammond** ”_ makes a great fucking headline.

**vi. detox just to retox**

After New York, he ends up back in DC as a pariah and a public relations nightmare, with court-mandated inpatient rehab. He really should be doing jail time, but the justice system wouldn’t put the “confused” and “misled” son of America’s sweethearts in jail. People go to jail for marijuana possession every day, but someone like him would never get time, even for funding a sex trafficking ring. Immunity by association.

He should be glad. He’s just angry. At the world. Fuck drugs, fuck the justice system, fuck his parents and their meddling, fuck the press and their agendas, and fuck the entire goddamn city of New York.

The rehab program uses the classic twelve-step format with bonus NA meetings and dialectical behavioral therapy.

It’s mandatory in the sense that he has to go, but they can’t force him to talk. The therapist doesn’t have the security clearance for half of his shit anyway, and he’s just not sure what the point is. It’s all fine and good to get clean when there’s no politics, no press, and no responsibilities because he’s locked up in a facility, but the second he leaves all those things will be back, and then he’ll be crawling back to the drugs, and he knows it.

They keep him there for five months and it’s the longest he’s been sober and clean since high school. He’s come to enjoy the freedom of not being chemically dependent, so he tries. There’s only one thing that can even come close to the euphoric stress release of a drug high, and it’s casual sex. He gets on a website and hooks up with someone almost every night.

It helps, but not enough. He still has his DC dealer’s number.

He does his first line of coke twenty-two days after he leaves rehab.

**vii. maternal politics**

His mom announces to the family that she wants to run for president a week after TJ gets out of rehab. He’s pretty sure it’s to keep him from doing something stupid to fuck up her chances.

He’s not sure what he could do that’d be worse than funding a sex trafficking ring, but when he starts doing blow again he takes extra care to keep it out of the media this time.

Douglas jumps at the opportunity to manage his mom’s campaign. His dad’s obviously involved since he’s done two of these already. TJ’s somehow recruited without his permission because he’s back in his parent’s house again and he’s not doing anything else. He doesn’t mind as much as he pretends to; he’s mostly talking to vendors and designers who aren’t important enough to warrant Douglas’ attention but insist on talking to one of the Hammonds. For some reason, people believe that he’s seriously involved in the campaign even though he got out of rehab less than a month ago. He doesn’t get it, but it keeps him busy, and more importantly, his family starts to treat him like a functional and productive human being again. Not that they necessarily stopped, but no one knew what the fuck to say to him after New York, which was probably fair. Now he gets to be sarcastic at stupid vendors who can’t get through their heads what his mom wants, and it’s nice right up until Elaine announces publicly. Then it’s press and touring and rallies and fundraising and press.

That’s what does him in. Because his mom’s people may be ignoring his very recent personal disaster, but the media isn’t. It starts with a reoccurrence of the “Elaine Hammond is a raging bitch,” commentary and ends with paps digging through their trash to write speculative pieces and an article titled, “Hookup, dealer, sponsor, or Hammond associate?” in the National Enquirer. They have pictures of every person who’s entered his new apartment in the past week with the length of the visit and speculation about the reason for the visit. His dealer is in the article, but they call him a hookup, probably because of the way he’s dressed.

TJ freaks the fuck out.

He starts with arranging a pickup at a different time and location each week. Even though he’s using almost double the blow lately out of stress, he can’t afford to get caught. He stops inviting people to his apartment. His actual name was never on his dating profile, but he deletes and makes a new one with a new fake name and a flattering shot of his abs instead of the intentionally dark partial-face shot. He stops drinking in public period, stops going to every club in the city where he was automatically recognized, and stops leaving the house without looking one hundred percent on point. There’s a lot of under-eye concealer involved.

But he starts doing so much more coke. And with that comes the nose bleeds. He’s only had this happen a few times, which is entirely luck. Some people get them frequently from the first time they use; TJ only gets them when he’s doing more than three or four lines a day for a significant period of time. The actual discomfort of a nose bleed is a price he’s willing to pay, so there are only two problems: it significantly increases the risk of using when he’s out if his nose could start pouring fifteen minutes later, and he’s got all these bloody tissues when he knows people are going through his trash.

The first three times he burns them all in a PYREX and flushes the ashes before realizing that he could just flush all of the tissues.

He can feel himself getting erratic as fuck like he always does when he overuses, but no one calls him on it. Honestly, everyone’s so wrapped up in the campaign that they don’t want to risk confronting him when he’s clearly being careful. He masters snorting without a straw and without wasting blow, and then it’s off the tops of disposable coffee cups in dark town cars, and out of emptied Altoid tins in offices when he’s sent on errands, and off the back of his hand up in the sound booth of the auditorium his mom uses for campaign events.

He realizes his appetite is off and he fixes that too. He stops eating around eight or nine the night before his mom’s lunch staff meetings. By noon he’s able to eat a reasonable meal portion, even if that portion is two-thirds of his calories for the day.

The next long-term side effect to overcome is sleep. His tolerance is high enough that cocaine usually doesn’t keep him up for more than an hour after his last hit, but he’s gotten into a god-awful paradox where his body associates cocaine with calm and stability, but stimulants before sleep does not lead to high quality or quantity rest.

It’s not like he’s always needed cocaine to sleep (he laughs the first time he admits it to himself because it’s so fucking ridiculous).He’s never been an easy sleeper, though, and the other thing that keeps his anxiety down besides drugs is staying busy. It’s not like he’s going to fall asleep without making the conscious decision to as a habitual stimulant user, so he has to tell his brain to stop before he can sleep.

Stopping means that every fear and destructive thought he’s spent the day ignoring and drugging away now have the perfect platform.

After a new personal record in hours awake (79.5), he figures out that if he does two decent-sized lines as the start of his pre-sleep routine there’s a sweet spot about ten minutes after coming down where he’ll fall asleep if he’s already in bed.

Douglas and his parents decide that they need to do the last month of rallies as a family to present a united front and emphasize that electing Elaine is bring America’s favorite family back to the White House.

Douglas and his parents decide to invite a press shadow that they trust to travel with them and write about how the Hammonds are happy and lovely and perfect for the next First Family.

Douglas and his parents decide that TJ is traveling to press events with them for a month with an actual press person watching them every second.

TJ decides that he is fucked.

He also decides that there’s no way in hell he’s maintaining his current cocaine intake. He talks to his dealer. His dealer suggests speed. TJ fucking hates speed. He buys it anyway.

The first rally is in Denver. They are wheels up from DCA at six o’clock Eastern for an event that afternoon. He does four lines of coke right before he’s picked up from his apartment, and when his nose starts bleeding in the town car, the driver says nothing. By the time the plane’s in the air his high is gone, and he takes his first pill.

TJ hates speed because it’s slow and it’s subtle compared to blow. It’ll be a good hour before it has any effect, similar to ex, but it’s somehow worse because ex has a very clear euphoria when it does hit. Speed does help him, but only if he looks for it. It sharpens him, helps him focus on what needs to be done and gives him an energy boost, but there’s none of the pleasure that he can only find in hard drugs and sex.

When they get to Colorado everyone has something urgent to do except TJ, and their reporter notices. She asks to talk to him, and he prepares to bullshit through questions about New York, but she never brings it up. She instead asks about his role in the campaign considering that he’s the only one in the family with no political background. It’s hard to talk about without turning the self-deprecation up to nauseating levels, but she manages to get something out of it, because **‘ _TJ Hammond on his mom’s campaign: It’s her time_ ’** goes live that night, and it’s a good article.

After the rally is a dinner for major donors, which he’s also forced to attend.He takes another pill right before because he knows the first will wear off during dinner otherwise. Douglas walks by just as he swallows and raises an eyebrow, but says nothing. TJ knows what he’s thinking: _Well he could be snorting cocaine._ Which, he could be. He wishes he was.

That night he can’t sleep. He’s still got speed in his system, but that’s not doing a damn thing since the cocaine before bed is definitely placebo effect rather than an actual biochemistry thing.

It’s one am. He has to be up at six. He wishes he had brought Xanax or oxy with him so he could try to just knock himself out, but he didn’t, and he’s in a city he’s never been to before. He could definitely find tips online — three cheers for the darknet — but it seems unnecessarily risky for something that may or may not work.

It’s two am. He has to be up at six. He does some searching. All of his options require meeting people on street corners in shady parts of the city. Not worth it.

It’s three am. He has to be up at six. He decides to just do his nighttime routine, cocaine and all, because even the two REM cycles will do him a lot of good.

That’s a fucking mistake. Even though it’s been nine hours since the speed, it’s very clearly still in his system, and combined with the coke he feels like he’s having a heart attack. His heart is beating well over one hundred bpm and he’s sweating buckets, and he spends his last three hours in bed shaking and debating if it’d be worse for his mom’s campaign if he overdosed if his hotel room or if he went to the hospital thinking he may have overdosed.

At seven o’clock he’s back on the plane and his father asks, “Rough night?” There’s a sarcastic edge to it, the one he gets whenever he talks about TJ fucking up or being fucked up (or both, it’s usually both). TJ nods sharply before sliding a pair of noise-cancelling headphones over his ears and putting his seat back like he’s going to sleep. It’s a very clear dismissal, if nothing else because he can’t hear a blessed thing with those headphones on.

He actually does fall asleep after about an hour.

For the rest of the month, he makes it work. He’s pretty much always high on something (speed, blow, ex, xanax, even weed when he gets desperate in California), but he doesn’t die, and he doesn’t lose his mind, and he doesn’t get caught by the press (mostly because their reporter is apparently a nice person who isn’t going to write a speculative piece every time his eyes are a little red).

He does four long lines right before his mom concedes the nomination, not because he needs it to play his part of Happy Hammond, but because he knows what happens after will not be pretty and he doesn’t know the next time he’ll be alone.

The next day his mom announces to him and his brother that she and their father are getting divorced. They both seem annoyed when all TJ has to say is, “Okay,” but what else is he supposed to say?

**viii. the great schism**

After six months of speculation about the ‘hidden dysfunction’ of the Hammond family, the press takes the divorce announcement as a victory. Douglas takes it way harder than TJ, which confuses TJ because Douglas spends infinitely more time with their parents than he does, how did he not see this coming? His parents haven’t really liked each other since the White House, and while it’s possible to love someone even when you don’t really like them, that has a time limit. He would know.

60 Minutes wants a joint interview with him and Douglas about what this means for their family since his parents are completely unavailable. Douglas calls him and spends twenty minutes presenting a three-point argument on while they’ll be better off in the long run if they do it. TJ hits the mute on his side and snorts a very long line halfway through.

They do the interview. And Douglas is probably right that they are better off doing it this way, because 60 Minutes won’t be quite as invasive and gossipy as some other programs would, and once they do their one tell-all they can refuse everything else with good reason. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s awful.

For some reason, TJ expected that the interview would be focused on his parents. Obviously they’d want to talk about the happy family campaign bullshit, but it would be parent-focused. Because parents. Divorcing.

Instead, it’s their entire family history from before the White House. How were they raised? When did their parents become interested in the presidency? Were their parents there for them as children or were they raised primarily by nannies and other paid staff? Did their parents talk to them about the White House early on, or were they just thrust into it once their dad decided to run?

It’s fucking awful. Especially because no one really cares what Douglas has to say because he worked on their mom’s campaign; obviously he says what he’s supposed to say. Instead, they want TJ, TJ who’s ‘rougher around the edges’ and ‘not part of the Hammond family show.’

TJ is high as fuck like he has been for the past six months and can’t quite manage to walk the line between too defensive and too transparent. He definitely swings too far to the former because it’s hard to undo twenty years of being told that loose lips sink ships.

Douglas tries to correct for him. The interviewer tries to get TJ to say something that he shouldn’t. TJ is all over the fucking place. Douglas gets pissed. TJ gets more pissed. Douglas storms out. TJ gets high.

And there was evening, and there was morning — another day.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you liked it?
> 
> detailed content warnings:
> 
> underage drinking, recreational drug use (marijuana, cocaine, Xanax, MDMA, amphetamines), getting outed, blink-and-you'd-miss-it implication of teacher/staff-to-student sexual encounters, mention of sex trafficking, low appetite due to drug use leads to food restriction reminiscent of an eating disorder


End file.
